Lawrence Wilkerson: Israel May Cease to Exist & Launch Nuclear Strike

Welcome back. We are joined today by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff

today, U.S. Secretary of State, and also spent a long time in his military career and at

the White House. So thank you very much for coming back on the program.

Good to be with you, Glenn. I hope it's getting a little bit better in Europe, but I'm told

by other people, one Norwegian friend this morning said, no, it's getting worse.

Well, whether it's looking good otherwise, politically everything else, no, it seems to be going quite

poorly as most places in the world. But yeah, a lot of these problems appears to have gotten worse.

Of course, things were already bad, but it's getting a lot worse due to the war in against

Iran. And well, the most recent statements we got from Trump first to give this 48-hour countdown

for the destruction of Iran's energy facilities, then he extended it to five days, then he extended it

to 10 days. Again, I wanted to know what you think will happen at the end of this countdown.

I mean, can Trump really afford to go up the escalation ladder now? And also, it's unclear what

this countdown is for. Does he actually believe he can get this from Iran? Is it public diplomacy

to manage narratives? Or do you see something to hold the government together? I'm just wondering

how you interpret these recent events coming out of the White House.

Of course, if I were to be absolutely honest with you and I will be, I think it's Trump trying to

buy back time that he knows he's running out. And he doesn't know any other way to do it. And he's

got a sick of panic enough cabinet where they go along with it. I don't think he has any idea

how he's going to get out of this. He's in it. He's in it deeply. He's finally, I think, come to

the realization that he's in it. And in it deeply, and he has not the tools to extricate himself,

that the main person who got him in it to this depth is BB Netanyahu. And that BB has absolutely

no sympathy for him whatsoever. And in fact, would take him with him in a heartbeat if it were to

hell and back. So he's really probably finally realizing even through his megalomania, which is

intensifying every day. I think Jeff Pace is right about that. He can't finish not only sentences,

sometimes he can't finish individual words coherently. And he's stuck. And he's trying to buy time

right now with all these different, you know, five days, 10 days, 13 days, whatever it might be.

But he's also very frighteningly marshaling lots of force across the globe,

not significant military force in terms of an invasion of Iran because we simply could not do

that. And if you were to attempt it, I think we would probably be looking at impeachment joined in

by his own party. What he's doing is assembling all manner of special operating forces and auxilaries

there too, like the 160th S O A R Special Operations Aviation Regiment, like the Rangers from

Washington, like the Rangers from other places in this country, all manner of special operators

whom he is going to try to use in some esoteric way, think Cargo Island or some of the other

islands in the Gulf. I heard mentioned this morning or other places like he did in Venice,

Wayla with this kind of instant precision afforded by the delivery vehicles and the extraction

vehicles and such. And it's impossible. You're not going to do that in this scenario like you did

in Venezuela. And you're certainly not going to do it with all these disparate forces being

brought in from different points on the globe. Aircraft from Ramstein, aircraft from Italy, aircraft

from Japan. I just don't know what he's thinking other than I'm going to pull off a really quick one

like I did in Venezuela. And it's going to be so ha ha ha. And I'll have done so much damage,

for example, to Cargo Island, Iran's principal port, that I will get some movement in the talks,

which aren't being conducted. Those were totalized by Whitcalf yesterday. I'm told by very

reputable authority that he has not seen a single Iranian. He's been dealing with Pakistanis

or Omanis or other people offering their great offices like God, but he hasn't talked to a single

Iranian. And in that vein, let me tell you what the most important Iranian in my mind just said,

this is a ratchee. At the UN meeting, especially convene, emergency meeting because of the UN is

pretending that it wants to look at now the bombing of the school in Iran, where many school children

were killed. And a ratchee had this decide. And these are just quintessential a ratchee type statements,

but they sum up the situation really well. Two bullying nuclear weapons, this is him telling

giving his statement to the UN emergency meeting. Two bullying nuclear weapons regimes have

attacked my country. This is the second time that they have torpedoed diplomacy. He was kind

there. He didn't say that they have in the middle of diplomacy conducted in all good spirits,

bomb the hell out of me. Normalization of crimes against humanity is not sufficient to describe

this. The attack on the school was just the latest chapter. This all began with Palestine.

It all began with Gaza. Now we have 27 days of illegal war against my country.

We have established you America, you Israel, you the United Nations have established there is no

regard for humanitarian law. 600 schools in my country have been bombed, hospitals have been bombed,

nursery homes have been bombed, nursing homes have been bombed, ambulances both stationary and

mobile have been bombed, water sources have been bombed, food sources have been bombed, these are

all war crimes. All a product of the world ignoring Palestine brought it right back to that,

the original crime, if you will. Then he ended up the we have resolved and I have no doubt they do.

That's whom he should be negotiating with. Whitcoff is scared to death of a broccoli when

they are going to the same room with him because he is a superb diplomat and Whitcoff has

a clue. Him and Kushner are just making money on their diplomatic envoy tours. So that's where we

are. We're at a point of utter confusion in the empire. And that cabinet meeting was a

personification if that's the right term of it. I don't know where it goes from here, but I know

it isn't good. Well, you mentioned buying time. What is there to buy time for though? I mean,

he's buying time to be buying time. Yeah. That's it. He's buying time to be buying time. And he's

moving all these forces around as if he's some kind of magician with military force. When in fact,

people like General Kane ought to be telling him, this is costing billions. And to know in other

than what, Mr. President, what is it that you attempt you are attempting to achieve? I listen to

Kane this morning, you know, General Kane, that asshole. All he does is proselytize for the people

he's making money off of. He's talking about how everything is going to come down to

we're going to attack them. And we're going to attack them with these forces that are currently

being martial, the muse, the two muse, the one from Okinawan. I think the other one's coming from

somewhere in Kona's and the 82nd Airborne element and these people who are special operators.

We're going to attack them. Where are we going to attack them? Where we're going to attack them

on various islands? We've had islands offered by the UAE. Oh, well, you mean that island out there?

You've been contesting with the run now for about what, 50 years, a little sparta. What are you going

to do from that island? It's not even near the straight. What are you going to do from that island?

Just sit there and preach. I'm sorry, General Kane. You have made the absolute era that if I were on

a game for with a major or lieutenant colonel participating in that game who turned around and told me

what you just told me that we are accomplishing all of our objectives, I would have thrown him out

the game floor. Listen, son, you're not here to accomplish your objectives. You're here to accomplish

your mission. Your objectives being accomplished are supposed to lead to accomplishment of the mission.

What's your mission? And you would have been unable to tell me. You would have been categorically

unable to tell me what your mission was. That's where we are. That's where we are. In military terms,

this is the worst performance I've ever seen by a leadership sale from the United States. It's

terrible. It's utterly terrible. And I blame them all from Kane to Hegsir to the president.

I didn't make sense, though, of this new leadership because a lot of people

were worried about this because what's happening now was very much predictable. For once,

the Iranians were quite open to what they were going to do. Despite Trump's claim that no one

could have predicted they would attack all these bases and that they would shut down the

straightover moves. Yes, well, reasonably, I guess how quickly they shut down the straightover

moves came as a surprise to many. But the overall direction, I think, should have been predictable.

But what is it with the administration now? It seems to be different. Not just in its demeanor

and the vulgar language, but we also see these other components like all these strange prayer

meetings. I'm a Christian. I don't mind prayer and I should have a greater role in the culture,

perhaps, but in politics and in the war rhetoric, it doesn't belong there if anything. It's quite

absurd. It's a complete bastardization of Jesus Christ. No question about

it. It's an adoption of the Old Testament that Jesus Christ repudiated. His whole time on this

earth, his whole 33 years or so of life was spent repudiating the Old Testament. He even said it

again and again and again. And now we have these people from Franklin Graham to Peter XF,

that more resurrect the Old Testament, Ted Cruz included, and a host of other people might

Johnson or the House. They want to resurrect this Old Testament God and use it as a cudgel

to beat their enemies with. And their enemies are everyone from Democrats to the Iranians.

And they like what Trump is doing. I can't believe that the leadership of both parties, though,

is going to continue this progress towards destruction because the cost of it, not just in

dollars for a country that's already $40 trillion in aggregate debt, but the cost for the world.

This morning we were looking at shipping, we were looking at commerce in general,

we were looking at key products in that commerce. One of them was helium, for example.

You can't make computer chips in many regards to more sophisticated ones anyway without helium.

Well, a large portion of the helium. We didn't even know this when we were looking at commodities

and so forth. It comes through the straightover modes. It's like the Urea. I didn't know that much

Urea came through the straightover mode. We are disturbing the world economy in such significant

and profound ways right now that it might not recover for years. We are already in recession.

If you just look at two quarters in a row, we are already in recession. There is a really good

chance we'll go into depression. Not all because, because a lot of this was foretold by our

profligate physical policy, but this is sped it up and deepened it and made it instantaneous almost.

I don't think Scott Besson or Donald Trump have a clue that they're doing this.

Nor did anyone we were talking with this morning that they know what they're doing to the global

economy. If they do, they should all be taken out and shot tomorrow morning at dawn because

this isn't just the Empire. This is a lot of people. This is seven eight billion people that are

going to be impacted seriously and significantly by what we're doing if we don't stop very shortly.

And I don't even know if it'll stop if we stop because we've started it.

I was going to say, even if we stop, I think even if the world end tomorrow or today,

a lot of the problems are already now in place.

I'm under dips now off the straight that have no place to go. All loaded with crews.

Granted, the crews are only 10 to 12 people, but I mean, that's all it takes to run

with these big ships today, but they're standing off the straight with nowhere to go.

This is out in Mariners, almost 4,000 ships.

Well, this is the vulnerability though, after decades of

this globalization into dependence, everyone making themselves reliant on the whole machinery

working smoothly and then suddenly want to tax Iran. I mean, this is,

yeah, truly disastrous. But actually, when I was at the Naval War College,

I have room to paper on and actually studied, among other things, all the strates in the world

that were critical. And I use this my guide for criticality, the buildup at that time that was

going on to produce the law of sea treaty. And I looked at what those strates might be given

in the law of sea treaties regime. You know, the strates are either international or they're

harsh, so they're harshly here in this territorial sea, here in this territorial sea,

and then the center where the ships actually pass is internationalized.

I'm not making an accurate trail of it, but they did a good job of showing where all the critical

choke points were critical seas, inland seas, for example, like the seaable cost,

which was a big interest to us with the Pacific War, with the Soviet Union at the time.

And I came away from that realizing that there were about six or seven in the world,

that if you got control of them and control meant you had to have all the paraphernalia of that

control, air sea and subsea, maybe space, you could bring a world to its knees.

And it's coming true. It's coming true. In a most desultory and disgusting way, it's coming true.

And the straightforward moves was not actually the most serious in the top five identified,

but it was one of the top five where you could really do the Babel Mendam was much more serious in

the Red Sea. We're doing it. We're doing it to ourselves. And as you pointed out,

it partially became because we let ourselves become so globalized, but it was pretty good.

It worked pretty well, as long as everything function. It turned something like this into it,

and that's what I did in my scenarios. I threw things in there. And I saw a very,

very badly disrupted world when I did. And you know, we weren't as globalized then.

This is 25 years ago. We weren't as globalized then as we are now.

Well, as you said, Trump is a bit of a, you know, a one-trick pony. He is approached to most

other series. This is, you know, massive threats, you know, show an overwhelming strength,

and then comes in the deal maker to get, you know, an all or nothing deal. And the problem

though seems to be that if Iran holds all the cards in terms of going up the escalation ladder,

and also it's the kind of deals that Trump wants, they're not really possible for Iran because

they see this as an existential threat. They're not going to give up anything. They don't even

want to go back to the status quo because it was getting intolerable. And also, even if there was

a deal which seems reasonable, there's no trust anymore. It's very likely they would be hit

by missiles while they're there at the signing of the deal. So it's, Israel's never going to let it

go anyway. To the last is raining. They're going to keep it up. They're going to keep it going.

And by the way, I think we are getting close to the point where we might be thinking about the last

is rightly. It's getting really dire for Israel. What do we know though about the situation in

Israel? Because we don't get much footage out of Israel at the moment. At all, I think.

The very fact that in Hebrew Netanyahu announced last night in a moment of peak or a moment of

just imbacility or just hysteria that he was going to call up another 400,000. The battle in Lebanon

is not going well for them. Hezbollah has shown a remarkable ability to stop tank columns and

actually kill the lead tank, kill the rear tank, and then begin to pick off the tanks in between.

You've got Israeli tankers unlimbring their tanks and running up the hills beside the columns,

trying to get away from the fire. They have taken out seven or eight macawas already in a single

column. They're not having a good time of it in other words. I do now understand why he said he

was going to call up another 400,000. But then the question in my mind arose immediately. You just

called up 300,000, 30% of them didn't show up. Where are you going to find these other 400,000

and the more to the point where you're going to find those that will show up? Are these over 65

year olds or these under 18 year olds? What are these people that you're calling up? You do not have

that big a nation. You've probably seen the scenes. One IDF general pulling his hair out and

actually crying on the camera. A couple of mayors doing the same sort of thing. It's becoming extremely

dangerous to be in Israel in any capacity other than in a bombshell. Nothing is going up virtually

and everything is coming down. There's no air defense left in Israel and Iran has not run out of

missiles and in fact now can use cheap drones to do major damage in Israel because they have

nothing even to shoot the cheap drones down with. Put Lebanon and the real tasks they're confronting

now in Lebanon into that mix and then put what is still going on with regard to Gaza into that mix

and you have enough tally Bennett making these egregious statements and the reason Bennett is making

these statements is because he doesn't think that the United States has finished Hamas in Gaza and

he's right. He hasn't. This wanted, massively successful, hugely, hugely prideful military, the

IDF and its ground component is still not defeated Hamas in Gaza and Bennett's angry at Netanyahu

for taking his out of the ball for letting the UN and Trump create this Trump city or whatever.

So Israel is in turmoil right now. I hate to say this and I've been predicting it for a long time

but I don't feel any joy in having it coming true. Israel is going to disappear. As a Jewish

state in the Levant, Israel is going to disappear and Netanyahu is going to be the presider over that

disappearance. Well, I saw the well in the times of Israel. It was written or reported that the IDF

Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Samir, he warned that the IDF, again, this is the Chief of Staff

of the IDF, arguing that IDF will collapse on itself due to the manpower shortage. This is quite

a warning. He argued, you know, if you put up a red flag, I would put up all 10 red flags. This is

you know, it would seem this is the time not to double down but to find an offram.

You read it. You say there is no offram and Israel could cease to exist. So

the offram requires Netanyahu to face the music though, I think. And I think that's a big impediment

for him finding an offram because if he faces the music, he's probably going to jail.

But I just have a hard time. Also, if you look at the Israel's Iran's demand for the United

States, that is to leave the region. If it doesn't do so voluntarily, it will essentially pressure the

Gulf States to do so through, you know, conditioning access to the straight-off removes and also to

bomb out all the US bases. So what it doesn't look like in both the United States and Israel, two

countries which, you know, have linked their security to global primacy and regional primacy

or militarized that they're with and also with leaders as they have now that they're willing to

essentially argue, well, you know, we did a miscalculation, we'll give the Iran in what they want.

And walk back from this war which many people have been pushing for for decades. So

do you think there's a possibility instead of Israel seizing to exist that it will instead

reach for their nuclear weapons?

In that regard, I have some very disquieting news from Ted Postal, the America's professor

and MIT, who's been advising a lot of us on nuclear issues. He called me at William and Mary while

I was down there Tuesday night and we talked at length. And I think he convinced me,

I should say I think what he's saying is at least 75, maybe 80%, a possibility. I don't

know what percentage he would put on it, that the Iranians have sufficient enriched uranium now

and a facility deeply underground that they could build a bomb, put the warhead on a Karam

Shah or a similar type Mach 3 Mach 4 missile and deliver it. And maybe even more than one.

And as Ted was talking to me, I went back to Kungsakju and Yigun and Jim Kelly, our assistant secretary

for the Pacific, going to Pyongyang and taking an economic package that was fairly robust,

it had taken a lot to get it through George Bush, even more to get it through Dick Trainings.

As a compensation for they're giving up their pursuit of a nuclear weapon in Yigun or Kungsakju,

I can't remember which one. Look at Jim and in Korean, translated immediately,

said we already have the bomb. And that ended the diplomatic mission, it was over.

Jim came home. I think we're looking at that sort of talent capability, intent, if you will,

deep underground in Iran. And if they have made a decision to do what Ted Postal said he thinks

they have made a decision to do, and certainly they have the capacity and material to do and the

expertise, then we're in a new ballgame. Very shortly, we're in a very new ballgame because Iran

will have not one or two, but three or four or five. As the Korean said, they had six to 12

nuclear weapons. Where do we go from there if that is the case? And how does Iran demonstrate that?

That's a huge question in my mind now after talking with Ted. It also brings us back to Netanyahu

because I think still that Netanyahu is the most apt person to use, not one, but multiple

nuclear weapons when he gets in a real bind and is aware fully of that bind, which might be

produced by these sort of adumbrated elections that they're coming up. Will he do it? Well,

he let the genie out of the bottle and use nuclear weapons. I take you back to our chief statement

first. Well, it and it was I'm being attacked. We're being attacked. Iran's being attacked.

We're a non-nuclear state. We're being attacked by two nuclear weapons states. One admitted and

one not admitted. Maybe it's going to be three here very shortly. And then you have to go over to

Riyadh and ask yourself a question about what's the deal that Mohammed bin Salman has with Pakistan

and will Pakistan live up to it. So we're entering an entirely new dimension, which is why Ted

called me to talk with me, of this conflict. A dimension that in addition to what's happening

to the global economy, which won't go away and may indeed produce within the next six months

depression, global depression, we're looking at the possibility of a nuclear exchange and a

serious one. We also have Putin having talked with Xi and both of them agreed, at least this is

good intelligence, I think, that they are going to do what they can to help the straits stay open.

And I assume that that means that per Iran's conditions, that is to say any state supporting

Israel or supporting us in this war is not going to be allowed to transit and everyone else can

transit. How they're going to affect that on the water as it were? I don't know. But we're bringing

this to a head in a way that does not look good. When you survey it and you say, what are the potential

owl? What are the potentialities in this set of circumstances? There are so many bad ones.

And then you look at who's leading the empire, the baboon, the idiot that's leading the US

empire. And the rangatangs assemble around him. I can't be any more graphic and be accurate.

You really have deep profound concern.

That seems like this is going wrong on so many levels. On the battlefield, obviously going

terribly wrong, which of course could escalate into a nuclear exchange. As you said,

Iran could already have a nuclear deterrent in case Israel goes down this path. We have the economy,

a global economy melting down. You see the Trump administration, which

seemed to have his day in the sun after the attack on Venezuela now sees it's administration

could fall apart. It just seems this has a lot of dimensions to it and all of them are pretty

much terrible. Did you see any other wider ripple effects of this war? For example, simply

having lack of access to gas, this impacts key economic centers made to Taiwan with its semiconductor

industries. How do you see this possibly spreading or getting, I guess, wider ramifications?

Well, we did a little study pencil work now on campus and we tried to look at how many countries

particularly on somebody's hit list like Taiwan, how many countries had how much

days of supply before they began to fall apart, especially industrially, technologically,

whatever Taiwan again came to mind. But we were looking at other countries too, those that are

involved in conflict or are looking at conflict like Pakistan and Afghanistan.

And we came to the conclusion that there are so many hot points on the globe right now that are

lit brighter, if you will, by this crisis in southwest Asia that you could make a real good case

for having what would very much look like a global war very shortly. A company by, as we said,

global depression and countries are actually engaging in it trying to solve their depression-related

problems. Not to put too far to point on it, but just look at what's going to happen in this

country, I think, when you get prices like now are occurring in South Carolina, southern California

for a gallon of gasoline, back here in the east and in other states where it's still, it's not

low, but it's not eight or nine dollars a gallon. Someone told me yesterday that in Florida,

one of the three, 59 or something like that. So that's unusual. Let that ripple across the country

and let the other impacts that we're going to feel, unquestionably going to feel, if this really

turns into not just the recession, which it already is. As was pointed out this morning,

it already is a recession by the definition of recession. We've had two quarters in a row.

It's a recession. Now it has to head down a little bit further in order to be a depression,

and then once it becomes a depression, we're in a position that historically is very difficult

to get out of. And if we're complicating it even further in terms of extrication there from,

by this business of putting almost 4,000 ships off the straight of our moves would nowhere to go

and other things like that, because what we're doing is backing up things all across the globe,

then we're just augmenting it and deepening it. It's almost as if, Glenn, there are some people who

want a global conflict. I mean, I hate to say something like that, but it almost looks like

some of the thin-in sears, you know, the Rothschilds, the JP Morgan's, the Mediches, those types,

in the world today, are foaming for a global conflict and won't be satisfied until they get it.

I think they're going to have very, very, very heavy and deep recriminations if they do,

because this is not going to be fun for anyone. You're not going to be able to go into the market

and ride out and ride in and ride out and make fortunes off of this, because you're looking at,

well, you're looking at its most profound and deepest concern level, you're looking at a nuclear

exchange, and then you're looking at a large nuclear exchange. And as Ronald Reagan even came

to realize in the latter part of his second term, we don't want to do this because it's the end

of the human race. Bingo. We're walking down a very dangerous road right now, and the thing that

troubles me so much is we're walking down it in my country, in the empire. We're walking down

it with fools, with absolute fools. And I don't just mean one or two, I mean a whole horde of them,

from Hegseth in his Christianity, and Trump in his grifting to Gabbard and her lack of courage

to besson in his absolute disdain for children dying. You name it.

Secretary of the Energy of yesterday made an absolute ask of himself. Why, you know, I ask the

question of my students, why do you think we made the Secretary of Energy the latest

statutory member of the National Security Council? Why did it take so long and why do we make it?

Well, the answer was because he looks over nuclear weapons. Bingo. That's national security to

the ultimate. And yet what a fool we have is the Secretary of Energy. And I was thinking back

to the one, I can't remember his name now, but he was the nuclear physicist. And he helped Obama

with the JCPOA. And one of the reasons he was able to offer such extraordinary expertise to

those negotiations was because he was a nuclear physicist. Yes, he was Secretary of Energy,

but he was a nuclear physicist. Probably the only one we've ever had who's qualified to be that.

And now look who we have, a baboon. And one of the most dangerous departments of all, a baboon.

So we're in trouble, William. We're in deep trouble.

Well, if Ted Postol is correct, the Iranians have, if not across the line yet, that they can

cross it. And indeed, if they face an existential threat, and they think the US and Israel

in desperation could reach for nuclear weapons, and they have the material in the know-how,

it seems not improbable that they would develop a nuclear deterrent. I was just wondering how you

see the US and Israel reacting to this, or because it's not as if it would be, you know, if you see

Russia or China having a nuclear deterrent, then the first reaction is, okay, we have to be a bit

more restrained. But it looks as if they rhetoric around Iran that they bought into this, that is

that they're all, you know, irrational, crazy, mullahs. They want to just destroy Israel and the West.

And as Pete Tegseth might think, you know, that this is therefore, you know, a war for God, you know,

the good versus the evil, all of this nonsense. How would the US and Israel then react to a

Iranian nuclear deterrent? Because they probably wouldn't see it as a deterrent. They would

see it as a doomsday device or something. Well, let's look at another aspect before I get to that

for you. This morning, and I wasn't completely aware of this, I knew there was a target list as

it were, but I didn't know how extensive and how specific it was. I saw some of it this morning.

Iran has a target list for the region, Reed, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, they've already

pretty much destroyed. They have a target list that is all the main truly decisive points in the

region for all of these countries. An interim step for them, let's just, let's postulate for a

moment that we do put troops on the ground somewhere, limited troops, because we don't have enough

troops, but a lot of them there. The rumors right now are the Muse, which is about total about

4,500. The 82nd group that's coming in, all of these other troops are basically special operating

forces, like we used against Venezuela. So you've got the Rangers, you've got the Special

Operations Aviation Regiment Saur out of Fort Campbell. You've got all these people assembling

around in places now Ramshan and so forth, where they can descend on Iran. Let's say they do that,

and they land on one or two of those islands in the Gulf, including possibly Cards,

and they do a little damage here, a little damage there and so forth, and Iran says to itself,

well now it's time for the interim step, and they attack all these targets. That's going to

bring every single Gulf state to its knees, because these targets are the critical ones. They are

things like the output facility for Saudi Arabia, which is around 12 million barrels of oil per day.

Some of it goes on the pipeline and goes over near Jeddah and out through the Red Sea. By that time

the Houthis will probably be interdicting that, too, again. Some of it goes through the straight

or the Muse, the preponderance that way. So we're talking about bringing all of the states in the

region to their knees before they do anything else. What will we do then? Good question, Larry.

What will we do then? Because we will have, we've already lost our allies, I think, for all

practical purposes, but we will have totally lost them in and not just lost them as in they don't

want our protection anymore, but lost them because they will be basket cases. One has to ask the

question, what will their own people do at that time when the ruling parties are pretty much

wiping themselves out? So that's the interim step. Then you get to the answer to your question

about nukes. Do I think Donald Trump would even consider that Iran was a target that he shouldn't

use a nuclear weapon or not for a minute? Do I consider that BB Netanyahu would feel that way

not for a minute? So what do we have then? We have the empire and its vassal state in the

Mediterranean, Israel, using nuclear weapons on an ostensibly non-nuclear weapon state to destroy it.

Well, the only way you're going to do that is if you use a lot of nuclear weapons, I do mean a lot.

I mean a U.S. ballistic missile submarine in the North Arabian Sea unloading its tritons.

What do you think is going to happen when that happens? I hesitate to even consider it because

there are other people on the other side who have the same arsenal. In fact, there are two countries

on the other side that have the same arsenal. Russia, even bigger than ours, China is slightly

smaller than ours, but getting larger and certainly capable of wreaking havoc. So we're turning

at the three predominant nuclear powers in the world and facing one another with a proposition of

the U.S. just used massive nuclear weapons on Iran. I don't want to go there. I don't want to go

there. I prefer maybe the grave before I go there. Well, one would think that the U.S. wouldn't go

down that path given the risk of pulling in the other nuclear powers. But of course,

to which I read it, he said he won't. He has said he won't, but how many times is he said he

won't that he then subsequently did? I was going to say that this would make sense given how

predictably disastrous it would have been, but attacking Iran to begin with was predictably

a disaster. So it doesn't fill me with optimism. Let me just ask you a last question, though. What

do you think? Well, what under the possible ways out of this then? Because as you said, the

Iranians can go up the escalation ladder. They can go, you know, to the foretat, they can cancel out

all those Gulf states if they want to. They use countryly do much in terms of penetrating

the Iranian fortress, besides using nuclear weapons. So unless we're going up that escalation

ladder with all those consequences, we definitely don't want to risk. What is the

possible out there? You know, because Trump, if it was Yemen, he could declare victory and go

home, but he can't go home because it's not a possibility. So what are we looking at? What is

the possible diplomatic pathway out of this, keeping in mind that the last two negotiations were

used to launch surprise attacks? I think you just said it. I don't think it's very likely,

but I think you just said it. And you said, when you said it, and because it's not very likely,

you see the predicament we're in. But what you said was declare victory and leave. And that

means leaving Israel, too, to its own end, and it will be an end. That's the best thing to do,

declare victory and leave. And let Iran on its own, by itself, without a single US sanction upon

it, because we would lift those sanctions, we would go to the Europeans and the lifting

there, too, and say to Iran, rebuild your state. I would even offer some reparations where I

there, and I would never have created this situation in the first place, but where I suddenly lifted

into it, I would offer some reparations. And I would tell that little quizzling state of Israel

do as you can, but stop the killing. And I'd back myself up on the Gaza situation, too.

It's not going to happen. So I'm, you know, I'm pipe dreaming, it's not going to happen. But

declaring victory and leaving might, that kind of thing probably would appeal to Trump,

because he thinks he can spend anything with his people. And he only cares about his people.

He can spend anything into their believing it. And he's probably right with a significant

core of his maggot group still, that he could spend this into a victory if he tried hard enough.

Then come the midterms. He's going to lose, and he's going to be impeached. So are we going to

have the midterms? That's the next huge question for us. Even if we get through this by some miracle,

like I just described, he's still got to win the midterms, and all the polls show he's going to

lose, his party's going to lose, disasterously. And he knows impeachment is around the corner

from that, because I think even his own party will jump on it at that point. I remember Dick Nixon,

and I remember how the Republicans agonized over joining in the impeachment proceedings. And then

in the end, they went over to the White House, and they showed him the impeachment documents,

and Dick said to himself, I think I'll reside instead of being the first president successfully

removed from office by impeachment, because they were so powerful. The articles were so powerful.

That's what needs to happen to Trump.

Well, I have a feeling he's not going to go down without, uh, yeah, that was probably in a

straight jacket. That's the way he'll leave the White House in a straight jacket. I'm laughing,

but I'm crying. That's probably the way he should leave the White House.

I sort of tragic how I ended up here. I thought, uh, I am, yeah, I spoke recently with John

Mershaw, I was making the point that it was reason for so much optimism initially, that, uh, you know,

because in the first term, he didn't start any new war. He was a pretty much the first president

not to do it. He was all premised on the idea that, you know, the US had to adjust to this new

international distribution of power that he has, it has to end the forever wars in the Middle East.

It has to pull out of the, and put an end to the Ukraine war. You know, not that the objectives

were altruistic, but just if, you know, we have to focus on China and the Western Hemisphere.

And then here we are. One year into it, still in Ukraine, and now launching the worst war

in the Middle East. It's, if I read John, I've been, I've watched him pretty frequently.

And I know him a little bit. We started, we started Quincy together, the Quincy Institute.

He thinks it's all Israel's fault, ultimately. I mean, our fault for letting Israel do it,

but nonetheless, Israel's fault. I think it's bigger than that. I think it's more confound

than that. Yeah, I'll give you that Israel owns the Congress and they own lots of other

aspects of our life. So many aspects now that I think Americans are actually revolted as they're

finding out how much they own. And that's healthy. But I don't think it's all that. I think it's

imperial hubris too. And I think I saw that hubris up close and personal when the Cold War

ended and HW Bush got beaten and driven out of the White House by a huge coalition

back and funded by Israel. But nonetheless, we've just been off our rocker since that time.

It's almost as if the victory in the Cold War made us demented. And that's so strange because

it wasn't a victory. Gorbachev gave us the Soviet Union. We didn't take it.

Yeah, that's so the argument of Jack Matlock as well. He was there negotiating into the Cold War.

And he also warns that when the Cold War was the end of the Cold War was rewritten,

that is instead of ending by negotiations in 89 to being a victory in 1991, it changed

all, at least impacted the DNA hidden of the political leadership, that the piece is not created

through mutual understanding and diplomacy, but by staring down the opponent and defeating them.

And in this, of course, in victory, one can plant the seeds of one's own destruction.

So that was certainly Richard Cheney's philosophy.

Fear, he said, more than once, I heard him. Fear is far better than love.

Yeah. Well, thank you for taking the time on this very depressing topic.

Always, I really hope you're mistaken about this possibility, but yeah, fair here.

I'll be more than willing to go into the streets and sack cloth and ashes and whale and next my teeth.

I'm wrong, I'm wrong.